US-China Foreign Language
Volume 9, Number 8, August 2011
ISSN:1539-8080
Miscommunication and Identity in Wayne Wang's Films: A Stylistic and Linguistic Analysis
Rajko Petković, Sanja Škifić
Bridging the gap between independent cinema and mainstream cinema, the best films by Wayne Wang belong to the tradition of cinema of personal statement. His two early films, Chan Is Missing (1982) and Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart (1985), set in the Chinese community in San Francisco, are penetrating character studies exploring the issues of assimilation and identity formation in the immigrant Chinese community. The two films from the nineties, The Joy Luck Club (1993) and Smoke (1995), explore the themes of miscommunication and cross-cultural differences (a constant presence in his films) in a larger and multiple-story format. While The Joy Luck Club (1993) is set in San Francisco and continues the exploration of the Chinese-American community and inherent generational gaps, Smoke (1995) is set in Brooklyn and does not involve Chinese-American characters. Nevertheless, the themes and their resolution are basically the same, proving the universal nature of Wang’s films. Exploring the nature of everyday lives, Wang’s films can be interpreted in light of many different perspectives. This paper will explore the stylistic features of his films, their implicit Zen-Buddhist subtext, as well as their linguistic dimension, which give an empirical confirmation of the themes explored.
Keywords: identity formation, Zen-Buddhism, cross-cultural miscommunication, code switching, illocutionary force
Causation reseaches in language mainly focus on the causative verb researches. This paper aims to probe into the subcategories of English causative verbs. Following the route of Comrie (1981) and ZHANG Jing-yu (2002) and absorbing the certain idea of Levin’s (1993) and Haspelmath’s (1993) subdivision of English causative verbs, it argues that there are six subcategies: “clear”-class, “retire”-class, “break”-class, “kill”-class, “widen”-class and “make”-class. The elaborate subcategory study of causative verbs can be helpful to the foreign or second language learners.
Communication with others in human society is inevitable. Classroom teaching, in essence, is an activity of communication. Teachers and students convey messages by both verbal and non-verbal cues. Since the teacher is put at the dominating role, the non-verbal cues he uses in the classroom have an influence on the teaching effects. Therefore, this paper mainly discusses about the effects of non-verbal communication on college English classroom teaching based on the results of a questionnaire conducted, in the hope that teachers can gain some enlightenment from the analysis.
Keywords: non-verbal communication, English teaching, effects
Most high school teachers in Indonesia have been teaching English for years without taking care of their writing ability. They confirmed that they wrote their major papers (theses) for finishing their undergraduate program to be teachers; nevertheless, they confessed it was difficult to write. Those phenomena challenge the authors to conduct a research concerning an excellent strategy to motivate the high school teachers in generating ideas for writing. By conducting a short-term training to 33 high school teachers from distinct regencies of the province of South Sumatra for six hours, this study aimed at providing the teachers with a very short and effective way of writing academically as well as scientifically and analyzing the effectiveness of the short-term training model. The findings show that there is significant development of academic writing and the teachers have positive perspective toward the training model.
Keywords: training model, academic writing, paragraph, essay
This paper presents the important role of computers in foreign language learning, especially the role of web in vocabulary learning for intensive reading. It states the situation of web in foreign language learning and makes a comparison between the traditional ways of vocabulary learning and the web-based vocabulary learning in intensive reading. A small-scale pilot study is conducted and six subjects participate in the vocabulary learning in intensive reading. They finish the vocabulary preparation on the Internet before the intensive reading class. The result of the pilot study shows that the six participants like the way of finding word information, sending their assignment and having feedback through the Internet and they think in this way they remember the words more quickly and understand the text better.
Keywords: computer, web, vocabulary learning, pilot study
Philip Roth’s Everyman—A Contemporary Morality Tale or a Personal Encounter With Death?
Justyna Rusak
Publication Information:
US-China Foreign Language is published monthly in hard copy (ISSN 1539-8080) and online (ISSN 1935-9667) by David Publishing Company located at 9460 TELSTAR AVE SUITE 5, EL MONTE, CA 91731, USA.
Aims and Scope:
US-China Foreign Language, a monthly professional academic journal, covers all sorts of researches on literature criticism, translation research, linguistic research, English teaching and other latest findings and achievements from experts and foreign language scholars all over the world.
